Gareth Edwards is a bit of a hero of mine. I first heard of him when I did fxphd's AFX301 - A Guerrilla Filmmakers Guide to After Effects . Which actually turned out to be Gareth Edwards going through the work flow and shot by shot breakdown of how he made a TV film called "Heroes and Villains - Attila the Hun". For some context - Attila the Hun is basically a pared down TV version of Oliver Stone's Alexander or Wolfgang Petersen's Troy or Ridley Scot's Gladiator or you get the picture with the exception that in essence one guy put it together on his laptop. If you are at all interested in digital film making I recommend this course. After seeing Gareth Edwards in action you understand that the tag being applied to him of a "revolutionary filmmaker" is not hyperbole.

Too be honest I was astounded and couldn't understand why I had not heard of him before. A quick IMDB search showed that he had worked as a visual wiz on a couple of TV shows. But his adeptness at creating an Epic spectacle single handedly marked him as a super talent.

A little while later I heard that a Gareth Edwards had won the 2008 SCI-FI-LONDON's 48 hour film making challenge Factory Farmed.

Video: Factory Farmed by Gareth Edwards

Here is Edwards talking to the SCI-FI-LONDON team about making Factory Farmed.

Subsequently I had heard the same rumblings about Gareth Edwards's Monsters that you have heard. Here is SCI-FI-LONDON festival Founder & Director Louis Savy introducing the opening film of the 2010 SCI-FI-LONDON Festival Splice and the 48hr film challenge winner Abducted by the Shoot The Runner team. He starts off by talking about previous winner Gareth Edwards and what he has gone on to.

Multi-talented Gareth Edwards wrote, shot, directed and created the visual effects for this beautifully made amalgam of monster movie and wrong-side-of-the-tracks love story – think District 9 meets It Happened One Night. Contact with alien life has gone horribly wrong, and large parts of South America are dangerously infested. It falls to rough-edged young photojournalist Andrew to track down and save the rich-kid daughter of his boss, and get her out alive...

Having looked at the Edinburgh's International Festival line up. I'm a little jealous that I won't be up there this year.